Mahindra XUV500 niggles & solutions

This is a discussion on Mahindra XUV500 niggles & solutions within Technical Stuff, part of the Under the Hood category; Originally Posted by Mudhalaipatti
Time to rake up a old issue. I have been reading through the bulbs gone kaput ...

Time to rake up a old issue. I have been reading through the bulbs gone kaput issues and the issue is intriguing, because of the apparent source of the problem and the solution to it.

A number of XUV owners who's bulbs got busted, have had their auto headlamp function on and/or start/stop on. In some cases the bulbs busted, even when not using them. But that number is a negligible minority. The problem tends to point towards voltage spike whenever the engine is cranked. Also this doesn't appear to be instantaneous, as this problem manifests after prolonged usage.

For my case, the low beam bulb fused while idling the engine in my parking lot, after driving with lights-on for 45 minutes.

Quote:

So it appears that the voltage spike is minimal, but just enough to damage the bulbs one step at a time, till the point of failure. The spike is also that gets through the fuses.

....Or is the problem elsewhere.
...

I am tilting towards "problem elsewhere" theory!

Quote:

Originally Posted by m_upreti

I seems to be a genuine issue & M&M needs to look into it and get to the root and resolve.

I have been using the auto function in my Scorpio for the last 5 years and have till date not lost a single bulb (I have replaced the OEM bulbs with Philips White Vision, and now have 2 sets of spare OEM bulbs)

My take it that its the bulbs which are of low quality (or incorrect specification) which is the cause of the premature-bulb-fusing.

Reevsteer seems to have got new 80W bulbs (paid) from the service center. I can't imagine why would M&M offer new specification bulbs unless there was a problem with the old ones.

Reevsteer seems to have got new 80W bulbs (paid) from the service center. I can't imagine why would M&M offer new specification bulbs unless there was a problem with the old ones.

Any thoughts?

This is getting more interesting. Mine are 55W ones, feb-2013 manufactured. The lights are working fine, still. Why would M&M change to higher wattage bulbs ? Are these lights any brighter than the stock ones ? Any noticeable difference in lit area ? @Reevsteer could you please confirm.

All bulbs run at around 13.2V and that means the current drawn by each bulb is around 4.5A.

Amp = Watts/Volts

Now if the battery is not charging, that is the vehicle is switched off. When the light is switched on, the voltage drops to around 12V or less, drawing around 4A. However when the battery is charging, ie. the vehicle is idling, the voltage is around 13V and the current drawn around 4.5A. While the fuse is 15A, this small spike shouldn't cause the damage.

Now with Mahindra replacing them with a 80W lamp, the current drawn would be 6A, well within the 15A limit. But then why ?

Also the maximum current drawn shouldn't cross anything beyond 7A, then why have a 15A fuse? Potential to blow the filaments, you see.

Next time let me measure the exact readings and post here. As mentioned earlier the problem doesn't seem to be instantaneous. It's one small damage. One at a time.

My take it that its the bulbs which are of low quality (or incorrect specification) which is the cause of the premature-bulb-fusing.

Reevsteer seems to have got new 80W bulbs (paid) from the service center. I can't imagine why would M&M offer new specification bulbs unless there was a problem with the old ones.

Any thoughts?

Though the bulbs supplied as spare are from some no-so-known brand, the bulbs installed in headlights from factory are Philips H7 55W BV (Blue vision). These bulbs are notorious for pre-mature fusing as OSRAM Night breakers. That could be the reason they are getting damaged in some vehicles.

The news about M&M replaced 55W with 80W is surprising. Any idea this is a standard replacement for people complaining about light / bulb getting damaged? How would they change it without any relay changes?

The low beams on my car seem to be loosing light intensity! City rides are less of the issue but on highways is something I really need to do, I have my car given for 3rd service, will be collecting today. I told the RM about the headlamp issues, he said he will check with service advisor to find out if I can upgrade headlamps on my car to correct this!
About M&M changing to 80w is a surprising! We have projectors on low beams (yet to find out if it suites HIDs, and of course, needs ballasts) and we can make use of HIDs for far better luminance at 35/55w kind of power!

Though the bulbs supplied as spare are from some no-so-known brand, the bulbs installed in headlights from factory are Philips H7 55W BV (Blue vision). These bulbs are notorious for pre-mature fusing as OSRAM Night breakers. That could be the reason they are getting damaged in some vehicles.

The news about M&M replaced 55W with 80W is surprising. Any idea this is a standard replacement for people complaining about light / bulb getting damaged? How would they change it without any relay changes?

thanks
HCP

The spare bulb is an Osram product.
Which company manufactures 80w halogen bulbs?
The function of a relay is to prevent the switch from burning so why do you need to change?

My understanding is that the relay acts as a switch. What really needs to be upgraded is the wire from the battery to the relay and relay to bulb.

Yes. Not only the wiring, but relay also has got a maximum current rating. If you are upgrading bulb, generally I heard many bhpians advising to upgrade relay + wiring. May be XUV is designed to take the higher current consumption from a 80W bulb?

After the ASC test driver's spirited run, the turbo kick after 1500rpm is missing. Neither can I hear the turbo whine. Power increases linearly from 1000 upto 2500-3000 that I have tried. Since the fuel level was down to last two leds(about 70km DTE), I tried again after fuelling to full level. No change was observed. There is no error indication in the dash display or the infotainment unit. I downloaded torque app and logged the turbo boost. Looks to me that turbo is not working, but I'm no expert in this matter. What do you guys think ?

And I have an outstation trip to make tomorrow morning. Couldn't have come at a worse time. Hope I don't get stranded.

After the ASC test driver's spirited run, the turbo kick after 1500rpm is missing. Neither can I hear the turbo whine. Power increases linearly from 1000 upto 2500-3000 that I have tried. Since the fuel level was down to last two leds(about 70km DTE), I tried again after fuelling to full level. No change was observed. There is no error indication in the dash display or the infotainment unit. I downloaded torque app and logged the turbo boost. Looks to me that turbo is not working, but I'm no expert in this matter. What do you guys think ?

And I have an outstation trip to make tomorrow morning. Couldn't have come at a worse time. Hope I don't get stranded.

My car is in service station for suspension work, and ASC provided me with an ill-maintained company owned XUV W6 model as a standby vehicle. As soon as I took this W6, the power delivery seem to be much higher than my vehicle. Called up the SA to check if it is due to anything wrong with my car. Instantaneously he said the difference is felt due to ESP function in W8 and compared to W6 cars, W8 power will be felt less. I couldn't really believe it since I have tested the power delivery by switching off the ESP function in my car before, but didn't really felt any difference.

Though some weeks back when I checked the data through ODB in my car, the power goes to 140 BHP at around 4000 RPM. One interesting fact is for reaching this power figure, the vehicle has to be in gear and moving. In neutral, the BHP figures will only grow till around 40 BHP max. ( used fun2drive from Bosch).

I will connect the ODB scanner in W6 that I am using and check the boost data if you provide the app name.

There is a scatter plot graph available in the app itself, but I chose to log the parameters and imported the csv file to a spreadsheet. This graph was generated through google spreadsheet. This gives me more options in analysing the data than the simple scatter plot in the app.

Accuracy of some of the values reported by Torque depends on the vehicle profile setup. I think it'd be a good idea to share that here so that more knowledgeable folks here can suggest the best settings for XUV. Comparisons between different users will be more accurate if everybody uses the same vehicle profile. The profile was found in the directory /sdcard/.torque/vehicles in my installation. Note the ".", in torque, it is a hidden file in case your file manager settings are set to not display hidden files.

After the ASC test driver's spirited run, the turbo kick after 1500rpm is missing. Neither can I hear the turbo whine. Power increases linearly from 1000 upto 2500-3000 that I have tried. Since the fuel level was down to last two leds(about 70km DTE), I tried again after fuelling to full level. No change was observed. There is no error indication in the dash display or the infotainment unit. I downloaded torque app and logged the turbo boost. Looks to me that turbo is not working, but I'm no expert in this matter. What do you guys think ?

And I have an outstation trip to make tomorrow morning. Couldn't have come at a worse time. Hope I don't get stranded.

How do we interpret this graph?
To me it looks like - Turbo-boost exists right from idle RPM of ~800rpm and remains steady as the RPM increases.

My understanding is that the turbo kicks in ~1800-1900 rpm. So was expecting the turbo-boost to be present only when the RPM is more than that. I am getting confused. Can some experts shade some light?

How do we interpret this graph?
To me it looks like - Turbo-boost exists right from idle RPM of ~800rpm and remains steady as the RPM increases.

My understanding is that the turbo kicks in ~1800-1900 rpm. So was expecting the turbo-boost to be present only when the RPM is more than that. I am getting confused. Can some experts shade some light?

As per my knowledge, the boost should go up as we increase the RPM and remain constant after attaining certain RPM (at this point the waste-gate would open up to regulate the exhaust gas inflow to turbo by diverting some amount off the turbine).

Just checked the turbo boost in W6 loaner car given to me by ASC that I am using presently and found that the boost pressure goes upto 7.8 psi. The RPM was at around 3000 at the peak pressure. (Not shown on the graph).

Compared to this results, I would expect to see 0.54 bars in the graph posted by rlg (his graph unit is bar, but mine is psi). So it look like irrespective of the rpm his boost pressure is stuck at 0.05, which definitely a problem. I cannot suspect his test equipment connectivity issue as we can see the rpm varying dynamically as per throttle input. rlg, Can you check if there is any DTC codes got logged? Make sure you don't clear them in the process as this will help in trouble shooting at ASC.

Today early morning did some test on open stretch of highway and found that the boost pressure goes up till 22 psi. I don't have the graph yet to compare against the RPM, will prepare and upload later. But from the max hold function of the tool what I can see is max boost pressure is attained at around 3800 RPM. Please refer the blue color marked area where the max figure is registered.

For the past few days the infotainment unit in my W6 was having some problems. The song would stop playing mid-way with a loud "krisch" sound. The song would show as playing in the infotainment but no sound would come of the speakers. Also the reverse sensor sound too will not play up in the speakers. A Mahindra tried and tested method of shut-down and key-out method was working till yesterday evening.

Yesterday after the usual "krisch" jarring sound the unit just completely froze up. No amount of shut-down and restart seemed to work. The screen would retain the last displayed command like the 'fan speed' or 'temp change'. No song was coming on also.

Went to the service center to cehck on it. Their diagnosis as soon as they saw the problem was that the 'silver box' which houses the CD player was at fault, and the way they quickly acceded for a warranty request seemed this was a common occurrence. The box was swapped for a new one in 1 hour. The problem is solved for now.

Till date from November 2011, the date of delivery the following parts were replaced in my vehicle:

Power Steering Rack

Wiper Motor

Thermostat

Water Pump

Clutch Outer Cover Casing Kit

Two Puddle Lamps

Brake pads replacement to Galfer make

CD player silver box

Mahindra official recall items

I am really afraid of the vehicle running cost after the warranty runs out for me in another 1.5 years.